Thursday, February 24. Europe wakes up with an announcement: “Special military operation” in Ukraine.

It was the euphemism used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to refer to the invasion of the neighboring country. After the televised message, the first explosions began to be heard on Ukrainian soil.

The previous weeks were tense. The high point came when Putin recognized the independence of the rebel regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and ordered troops to be sent to the area.

The background to this conflict can be found in 2014 when Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and supported the separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. Then fighting broke out between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in that area. Until then, this conflict had claimed 14,000 lives.

During these three months, the fire has not ceased in Ukraine.

Days before Putin announced the operation for the “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”, the president had sent Russian troops to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 and moved into the north and areas closer to the capital, Kyiv, in mid-March.

But then Ukrainian forces recaptured large areas around Kyiv in early April, after Russia abandoned its advance on the capital.

Following the withdrawal from northern Ukraine, Russia has refocused its efforts to gain control of the east and south of the country.

In the south, Russian forces initially made rapid gains with the main goal of creating a land corridor between Crimea and areas held by Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk.

Still, resistance from Ukrainian forces slowed the Russian advance, especially near Mykolaiv in the west and at Mariupol. Finally, Russia managed to take Mariupol.

After a series of defeats near Kyiv, Russia withdrew its troops from the Ukrainian capital. His initial goal seemed to be to sweep the entire country and overthrow the Ukrainian government, but he had to rearrange his strategy.

Thus, it directed the weight of its field operations to the east of Ukraine, to Donbas, precisely where the conflict began in February.

Donbas is the former coal and steel producing area of Ukraine. It comprises the entirety of the two great eastern regions, Lugansk and Donetsk, which stretch from the outskirts of Mariupol in the south to the northern border.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba compared the fighting in Donbas to that during World War II, with “thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, planes and artillery taking part.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg recently said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not going to go as planned and that the Russian attempt to capture the eastern Donbas region has “stalled”.

The most visible drama is that of the millions of Ukrainians and residents of the country who, from one day to the next, had to flee for their lives.

Between the internally displaced, who have traveled to safer areas of Ukraine, and those who have left the country, there are an estimated 14 million people who have left their homes, according to data from the United Nations (UN).

Internally displaced persons in the country are close to 8 million.

About 6 million people have left for neighboring countries, especially to the west.

Still, the pace of refugees leaving Ukraine has slowed in recent days. The UN claims that as of May 17, 1.8 million Ukrainians have returned. This is in part because areas of Ukraine such as the capital Kyiv, which was threatened by Russian military advances at the start of the war, are now considered safer.

Poland, Romania, and Hungary are the countries that have received the most refugees along the western border of Ukraine.

Poland, which has received the largest number of refugees, and Moldova, which has the largest concentration of refugees in proportion to its population, have called for international support to help finance their efforts.

Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia have become transit zones to other parts of the European Union (EU). For example, more than 700,000 Ukrainians are in Germany, 40% of whom are children.

The EU has granted Ukrainians the right to stay and work in its 27 member countries for up to three years. They are entitled to welfare payments and access to housing, medical treatment, and schools.

The Czech Republic has granted some 350,000 emergency visas to Ukrainian refugees.

There have also been displacements from the north of Ukraine towards Belarus, and eastwards, from the pro-Russian breakaway regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, towards Russia.

The displacement of Ukrainian refugees both inside and outside the country in these three months represents the largest migratory movement in the region in recent decades, according to UNHCR data.

Behind it is the displacement during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which left more than 2 million displaced in 3 years.

It is closely followed by the war in Syria, where 10 years of conflict have driven 13.7 million people from their homes.

In Latin America, UNHCR estimates that 6.1 million refugees and asylum seekers have left Venezuela in recent years.

No official data

To date, there are no updated figures from independent sources that determine the number of deaths that have occurred during the three months of conflict.

On May 13, Ukraine claimed to have killed some 20,000 Russian soldiers. Russia has not updated its death toll since March 25, when it acknowledged 1,351 deaths.

The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) estimates that Russia has lost around a third of its ground combat force since the war began in February. He says a combination of factors has led to high casualties, including poor tactics and limited air cover. (I)